Praha Panoramaticka. Josef Sudek. Statni Nakladatelstvi, Praha, 1959. First edition. SIGNED, "Josef Sudek, Horni Jiretin, 28/VIII '62" on half-title page (Horni Jiretin is a village in the foothills of the Ore Mountains; the previous owner of this volume was a friend that Sudek often visited there). Oblong folio. Clothbound in photo-illustrated dustjacket. Preliminaries + poem by Jaroslav Seifert + 284 gravure panoramas of Prague and vicinity.

"Sudek is a photographer whose body of work suggests that photography was as necessary to him as breathing, Josef Sudek claimed the city of Prague and his surroundings as comprehensively as Eugène Atget claimed Paris His masterpiece is one of the most singular photobooks ever made, Praha panoramaticka (Prague Panorama). To create this wealth of memorable images, Sudek used an antique 1894 Kodak Panorama camera with a spring-drive lens that produced a negative of approximately 4 by 12 inches. Of all his books, this one sums up his love of Prague. The panoramic camera is a strong unifying element in the imagery, but so is Sudek's democratic eye, which disregards nothing. His feeling for light, weather, and space in combination has never been surpassed. Praha pnoramatické is a veritable encyclopedia of how to plot, construct and unify a panoramic photograph. And if this were not enough, Sudek even pulls off a near impossible trick at the end of the book: good vertical panoramas".--Parr & Badger